by Gennita Low
Nuh-uh. She wasn’t going to suffer a pounding headache and a lecture about quantum tango, or whatever. “Armando isn’t bipolar,” she said. “The serum works because it’s a pain blocker. We already know it works when a fatigued pilot takes it. Prolonged pain can fatigue a person too, so that’s why the serum works. No need for a medical background to explain that, Jed.”
He shook his head. “You forget. This is a bio-synthetic serum that has been altered not just as a neuro-blocker, but also as an enhancer. I’ve already seen the way your body chemistry was messed up, Elena, when your mind and body were fatigued. Simply put, it helped enhanced what your body chemistry believed it lacked. I’ve been thinking about Armando and his interest in illusions. I wonder whether he started getting more into it from the serum’s usage. This is the part about the drug that I don’t like.”
Helen arched an eyebrow. “Are you saying that I’m going to start performing magic tricks with Armando? Can I borrow the bustier for my costume?”
His lips quirked. “You’re just determined to make fun of everything serious, aren’t you?”
She shrugged. “It’s hard not to when everyone around me is always throwing scientific and military stuff at me. Quantum physics? Hypothalamus gone bonkers? Particles tangoing in space? Go on, explain it to yourself. I just do it, thank you very much.” Frankly, Jed’s slow smile of amusement at her techy talk was a more interesting subject. The man was damn sexy when he was relaxed and smiling, which wasn’t often, from what she’d observed. She sighed, adding, “I know it’s serious, but that’s how I deal with it. You have your own little defensive mechanism, and I have mine.”
She swallowed as she watched him step out of his tailored pants. What was she saying again? Defensive mechanism? She had none, none whatsoever, against this man.
“What’s my defensive mechanism?” he asked curiously.
Helen rearranged the pillows under her so she could have a better view of him. She hadn’t thought he was going to actually stay with her, especially since he’d been sleeping in his own room since their arrival from Lake Matka.
“You hide everything, even from those you care about.” She tilted her head. “But I’m getting better at reading you.”
“Is that so?”
“Yup. Like, for instance, I know what you have to do next.”
He didn’t answer her as he walked into the bathroom. She enjoyed the back view. She lay there, waiting, thinking about his decision. He didn’t like to see her hurting, she realized that now, even though he did a great job at not showing it. He’d left her alone last night because she’d taken sleeping pills as a final resort.
When he finally joined her in bed, she was almost feverish with anticipation. He was walking around her room as if they had been sleeping together for fifty years. The lurking amusement in his eyes finally told her that he was teasing her with his usual deliberate, calm manner.
“Heath told me he gave you a vial of the serum.”
She glared at him. “So? You think I used it?”
“Did you?”
“I still have a headache,” she pointed out.
“That could mean that it didn’t work without remote viewing. It affects each tester differently.”
She glared at him harder, trying to ignore the hardness of his thighs against hers. “It’s right there on the bedside table. You’ll see that I haven’t used it. You should be pissed off at Heath for giving it to me.”
He shook his head. His free hand lifted stray strands of her hair from her face. “Why didn’t you use the serum?”
“I…” Helen shrugged and grumpily batted his caressing hand away. She closed her eyes, not wanting to acknowledge the reason. She had wanted to; the temptation to ease the headache that ebbed and flowed was strong. But she hadn’t been able to do it. She sniffed. “Damn.”
“Admit it. You knew it would be against my wishes.”
Her eyes flew open. “Do you know what tact is? There are other ways to say things. This isn’t a dictatorship. You’re making my headache worse, thank you very much. And if everyone’s so damn obedient, why the hell did Heath disobey you and give me the vial? I don’t see you telling him it was against your wishes.”
His lips tightened a fraction. “Heath was being Heath. It’s his job to offer temptation, look for weaknesses. He likes to think he can offer alternatives to a problem.”
Helen rolled her eyes. “Are any of you guys ever going to stop testing me? Is everyone trying to own me?”
He tugged at her tightly crossed arms till they loosened. “Just me.” He snuggled up against her, his breath hot against her ear.
Something about his tone of voice caught her attention. “Are we going to do it now?” she asked softly.
“If you want to.”
She put a hand on her chest in pretended shock. “The great Number Nine asking permission to activate a trigger?”
His hand snaked behind her neck and he pulled her in for a leisurely kiss. He tasted of mouthwash and male heat, totally addictive. She wanted more from him and let him know with her hands.
When he lifted his head, his silver eyes searched hers. “I won’t have you remote viewing free form without being aware of me. Quantum entanglement theory be damned, if you took off spontaneously without me around, I want to be able to call you back, Elena. And the only way I know how is to activate the trigger between us.”
“I know. I was thinking the same thing too.” She grinned, and added, “But I don’t mind bouncing particles and creating my own physical reality with you while you do it.”
Actually, she was a little awed at how far ahead he’d planned this. He’d embedded that trigger inside her anticipating this problem, and as much as she personally loathed the idea of using her attraction for him against her, she had to admit that it was the perfect way to anchor her. He was asking her permission. She leaned into his hand as he caressed her.
“I’m ready.”
Besides, maybe she could actually catch the trigger phrase this time. Her expression must have betrayed her thoughts, or he read her mind. In the soft glow of the room, his smile turned devilish.
“Want to take a pill first?” he asked wickedly, his caress turning into a vise.
She realized, much later, how difficult it was to pay careful attention to words when a master seducer was carefully giving her all his attention.
Chapter Twenty
So far so good. Even at half a dosage, Helen could feel a big difference. The pain was gone, or at least, she didn’t feel it. Maybe it was from being nagged by a headache for the last few days, but the sudden lack of tension felt incredible. Undistracted by pain, she could think in whole paragraphs again. She didn’t need to distract herself by taking notes.
She frowned. Armando and his illusions—was he distracting himself from his headaches that way? She needed to make it A-1 priority to have a one-on-one chat with that man when she returned to Center.
“Hell, status.”
The sudden sound of Jed’s voice through the earpiece made her shiver with sudden awareness. Thanks to the serum, she’d been crouching in this position for over an hour now without feeling a darn thing—not the discomfort of her position, not the heat that was making her shirt damp, not any normal need to stand up and stretch at all—and he managed to cut through its effect and disrupt her sense of calm watchfulness by just saying her name.
She peered through the binoculars, checking the auditorium below. “On time,” she said. “I see the diplomats on the stage. It’s heavily guarded.”
With the presence of so many important heads of state, the whole place had been swept by sniffing dogs and detectors, double-guarded with metal detectors at checkpoints as well as security cameras at every possible angle, looking for snipers and suspicious-looking packages. The American contingent had brought their own operatives, but had been told to keep out of the way of Macedonian security, which didn’t want any interference from outsiders. Nonetheless, Helen was qu
ite sure there were plenty of other “outsiders” from Interpol, Europol, and other outfits walking around here. No one wanted an international incident. Or at least, on the outside.
There was a decoy out there somewhere and the package given to him at Lake Matka had convinced Jed there was a connection with Deutsche International. While they were busy going through exit points, Hawk had reported in again. She hadn’t been close enough to hear the conversation, but whatever was happening at the SEALs’ end was serious enough to warrant Jed making several calls as they walked out of their room to head to their positions.
Just as she’d turned to leave, he’d grabbed her hand in the middle of a call, and said briefly, “It doesn’t matter that this is a decoy. It means they’re still waiting out there for the real thing. Do you remember those CIA faces we saw?”
She’d immediately understood him and nodded. “I’ll keep an eye out for them.” He’d squeezed her hand and let it go, but she felt his gaze following her out the door. It was while outside, with the crowd and noise, that she had first noticed something different. Sometimes the people she was observing glowed. That was the best word she could come up with to describe it. It only happened intermittently and the sight usually dissipated after a few seconds.
So taking the serum before she was undergoing remote-viewing downtime caused wonky perception. But that was to be expected, right? She didn’t have time to analyze it right now, but when she had some time, she’d sit down and make a list of all the odd reactions she had while using SYMBIOS 2. Dr. Kirkland had wanted to experiment using the serum before an RV session anyway, so this decision to use the serum now should give him an idea. Of course, they hadn’t thought of spontaneous remote viewing.
She looked through her binoculars again. Frowned.
“Where’s Number Nine going, over?” she asked. Jed hadn’t said anything about moving out of position.
“He’s going down to the underground parking lot. Weber’s meeting him there,” Heath replied.
“Weber from Deutsche International?” She remembered the name from the last mission. Weber was one of the top guys at Deutsche International where she’d retrieved the SEED decoder. What was D.I.’s connection with all these missing weapons?
“Yes. He had someone pass a note to Jed. Jed says to give him fifteen minutes and not to move out of position. All eyes on entry and exit points. Stay in position, Hell.”
It struck her as strange that Jed would leave when the decoy could strike at any time right now. What was in the note given to him?
“Affirmative,” she said.
But something just didn’t feel right to her. They’d all agreed that, decoy or not, someone was planning to make a statement against this group of leaders gathering here today. The first shot, the one today, was meant to distract from the bigger target, which they were hoping to avert once Hawk took care of business at his end.
“One thing at a time,” Jed had said, as he laid out the initial plans.
Why did he choose to go off to the underground garage without more than furtive instructions to Heath?
“Is his comm. device on?” Hell asked.
“Yes, but he can’t listen in here because he’s going to be busy talking, Hell. He’s switched to using de Clerq for all emergencies and updates. If anything happens here, de Clerq will let him know.”
That made sense. This way he wouldn’t be distracted by all the communications going on by every sector and if they needed to get hold of him, they could pass the information on quickly to Drew de Clerq, who covered the operations from Center through satellite.
“Something’s happening down there,” one of the other operatives noted.
She trained her binoculars on the circular stage and saw a flurry of movement at one corner. Some of them had that weird glow that she’d been seeing, and she couldn’t quite focus on their facial expressions. She blinked several times.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Hang on. Something coming in from de Clerq.”
Due to earlier prep work, de Clerq would be able to tap in on certain peoples’ private conversations. This move was to enable them to know the actions of the different groups of security detail taking place around them to lessen the chance of getting into each other’s way. Eight Ball, COMCEN’s computer, could pretty much give instantaneous translations of several languages and conversations at the same time, thus upping their chances to pick up any anomalies and incidences. COMCEN had no intention of allowing any other agencies to get their hands on the trigger, if it made it to Skopje.
“The Macedonian security just caught a woman strapped with explosives trying to enter,” de Clerq reported. “She claimed to be from a separatist arm of the KLA and was after the Kosovo representative here.”
“Think she’s the decoy?”
“Eight Ball calculated it at eighty-five percent, seeing that Dragan Dilaver is KLA and Greta is probably partly affiliated.”
All this seemed to connect with everything the injured Hawk had told them in the earlier uplink that Helen had listened in on. Dilaver was a KLA man and of course, if Greta was sending a decoy ahead, she would use a KLA agent.
“So if this is the decoy, and we have the trigger, is our mission over?” she asked.
“We don’t have the trigger yet, Hell,” de Clerq replied. “Hawk McMillan recently reported in that he was close but hadn’t gotten to the dropped crates yet. Also, he’d been sabotaged, so Jed had sent Number One down to help retrieve the trigger immediately. Stay in position while I report in to Jed.”
So that was what Jed had been on the phone about earlier. How many missions was the man taking care of in his head? One foot in Skopje, one hand in Velesta, one eye on her, the other eye on various other targets, one finger in some kind of deal with someone in Deutsche International—he was the walking, talking multitasking robot.
Not last night.
Helen grinned. Okay, there were moments when he was actually human.
Despite his façade, there was much more to this exasperating man than the cold, ruthless commando that he showed on the outside. She was intrigued by all the things she’d discovered recently, and she planned to find out more. It was strange, how he turned from a make-believe naked avatar into a real live person, and she was comfortable with both. Well, as comfortable as one could get with a man such as Jed. It would never be easy, she realized that now, especially at moments like this, when the thought of him made her…she frowned, lifting one hand…glow. What the hell. She was glowing.
She waved her hand, watching the trail of light that the motion created. She looked at the crowd below. Now that she looked for them, those odd flashes of colors she had seen earlier were more pronounced, but instead of dissipating like before, they hung, like color bubbles, around some of the people.
Was it the serum affecting her perception? She hadn’t seen any glow like this that first time she’d used it, but a one-time usage didn’t mean anything conclusively. Besides, this time, she was using it before a remote-viewing session, so she wasn’t totally exhausted mentally and physically.
She looked down and studied herself. Yes, she was definitely emitting some kind of glow. Now that she was concentrating on it, she could feel some sort of charge. Heat. It didn’t feel dangerous. In fact, it felt natural, a part of her. She closed her eyes for a moment, enjoying the sensation. It was enjoyment. Satisfaction. What was giving her these feelings? She projected her senses outward, the way she did when remote viewing, looking from the inside.
Jed in bed with her last night. His body on hers as he took his time pleasuring her. She could feel the orgasm that rocked her, the same powerful surrender, except this feeling was…a memory.
Suddenly, like channels crossing wires, she saw Jed walking with another man toward a waiting limousine. Her senses screamed, warning of danger.
Helen’s eyes shot open. She licked her dry lips and listened to the erratic pounding of her heart. That had felt so real, as if she was
actually having sex again. She stared at both her hands, then took in the rest of her body. She was glowing even brighter. What. The. Hell?
Grabbing the binoculars, she did another sweep of the crowd, ignoring those odd bursts of light, studying the stage and those on it. Everything appeared normal.
“See anything, Heath?” she asked.
“Negative.”
“You don’t see anything that’s odd at all?” she insisted.
“Negative. What do you see, Hell?”
People that glow. And oh, she was glowing too. Hell shook her head. Something had happened, was happening. Her inner voice had interrupted a…dream? Illusion? Whatever it was, that charge of heat hadn’t been spontaneous remote viewing.
“Nothing,” she muttered, but her body was still giving little tremors.
Two men walking down below caught her eye. She recognized them from the remote-viewing session; they were the men monitoring that other remote viewer. Or maybe, it was interrupted by a very quick flash of remote viewing. Jed at his private meeting in the VIP garage. Danger.
“Shit. Heath. Three o’clock. Two men in black tie and suits. I know they’re up to no good. I’m going to follow them. Can you track them while I get down there so I don’t lose them?”
“Affirmative.”
***
So good. So drunk.
He was so alive.
Of course he would be okay alone in this room, were they kidding? Go, go, go, leave him here. Yes, yes, he would track that girl bringing the bomb from Velesta—what’s her name again, Llallana—yes, Llallana with the pretty black eyes. But she just got into the car after making some silly side trips; she wasn’t going to be here in Skopje for hours.
He wasn’t going to tell them about that last little bit, though. Yes, let them wander out there doing whatever it was their boss had ordered. He, Jonah Samson, Five-One, was going to roam free from their monitoring. Free to slide inside any of these people to take and record his fill. The streets were filled with wild women here and they gave him what he needed and more, so much more. All fresh sexual memories, as much as he wanted. He’d never experienced so many kinky things—threesomes and foursomes, even orgies between women. Oh, how he liked that. He could tell some of these women didn’t want to do the sex acts he was recording but since he was at the receiving end of their services, he didn’t care. It felt good to “feel” the sexual power over them, almost as good as really having their pretty little mouths sucking on him. No, better. Because this way, with the serum enhancing his abilities, every part of him felt stronger. And why not use his talents to achieve the kind of orgasm people would kill to have? The absolute power of harvesting someone’s sexual pleasure for his own private mental recording, replayed with his body experiencing every detail. Oh, this new collection was going to keep him happy for many, many nights to come. He smirked at his own pun.